SUPPORTING GRADUATES TO ADAPT IN AN UNCERTAIN

SUPPORTING GRADUATES TO ADAPT IN AN UNCERTAIN LABOUR MARKET

SARAH BROOKES, Student Services Marketing and Operations Director, Jisc shares insights into the graduate labour market and looks ahead to the future

The last few years have demonstrated how near impossible it is to predict the future. Yet this is what many employers seek to do each year when setting hiring targets for their graduate programmes.

A global pandemic, economic downturn and political instability can all have a negative impact on recruitment decisions, so what does this mean for students ’ and graduates ’ career planning?

We recently held a series of events for careers advisors and employers to provide insight to the graduate labour market and what we should expect for the year ahead. If you missed them, you will be able to catch up with them on Luminate. Here are three of the key takeaways.

FORECASTING A RECESSION

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) confirmed the UK has fallen into a recession. This typically hits new entrants to the jobs market the hardest and there ’ s an exodus of older workers. Recruitment schemes, work experience and training programmes are reduced, and graduate unemployment goes up.

Historically, the jobs market starts to fall off once it becomes plain that things will be difficult, continuing to slide for several quarters, before slowly getting back on its feet.

However, in the last recession, the graduate labour market was, by some distance, the least affected part of the labour market. This is because most graduate recruiters have learned the hard way in the past – that cutting training schemes only hurts them when recovery comes around. This is the first time that we are entering a recession with a labour shortage. This suggests that recruitment decisions may not quite follow the same pattern as they have historically.

The UK labour market proved itself remarkably adaptable and resilient during the pandemic, and it didn ’t just outperform the worst-case scenarios, it pretty much outperformed the best cases as well. In the case of UK graduates, despite the worst hiring environment we can remember in June 2020, the large majority of that year ’ s graduates got jobs, and good jobs at that.

There is no reason to believe that a recession this time around wouldn't follow a similar pattern and that most graduates would find work.

That said, some graduates would be hit worse than others – not always the ‘ usual suspects ’ in the arts – but those in fields most exposed to large reductions in spending, often engineers and graduates in construction. These are, however, often the first to see an upturn in recruitment.

Graduates would be less affected than people without their level of qualification. The only thing worse than being a graduate in a recession is being a non-graduate in a recession.

The shape of the labour market and the way we work will be different in a couple of years to the way we work now, and time and again graduates have shown they have the resilience and adaptability to take to new and changed circumstances and to business adapt and thrive.

It’ s important that we continue to support and back students and graduates so that they can adapt and thrive this time as well. This year ’ s What do graduates do? publication, written in collaboration with careers advisors, is due to launch over the coming weeks. This provides a wealth of advice and information to help understand what graduates can do with their degree. We will also be adding the new data to our student-facing services including What can I do with my degree? on prospects.ac.uk.

LABOUR SHORTAGE

Like all downturns, there will be unique features. One of the fallouts of the pandemic has been staff shortages. This year the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) annual recruitment survey reported that around one in ten graduate vacancies are unfilled and 40% of employers are finding it difficult to fill graduate jobs.

WHAT SHOULD GRADUATES EXPECT?

Prospects Luminate

Prospects